I don’t mind it either, but only in the places where it works well.
But if you enable high contrast mode it looks dramatically inferior to iOS 18.
And the icons all look like they’re from some cheap iOS 4 Cydia/Winterboard era theme.
both those issues still apply when set to bottom instead of compact
another Safari issue I noticed, and maybe I just didn’t notice it before on iOS 18, but if you’re logged into a website and open a link in a new tab, that tab has a distinct cookie jar. ie. you’re not logged in there.